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2 Things Family Caregivers Tend To Forget About Caregiving

The undertaking of family caregiving brings with it a lot of responsibility. Chances are, you already had plenty of responsibilities before the prospect of caring for mom and/or dad became an urgent matter to address. If you are reading this, you are probably nodding your head in agreement. With the myriad of medical concerns and basic care, family caregivers tend to forget about caregiving affecting the lives of their family in negative ways if they don’t consider a couple of basic things.

There is a saying, “put your oxygen mask on first.” It’s not just an instruction by an airline attendant before you take off. It’s true in life. If you really want to be effective at caring for others, you need to be able to take care of yourself first. How do you do that as a family caregiver? There’s a couple of ways to start.

Family Caregivers Tend To Forget About Their Own Needs

We’re not just talking about getting a good night’s sleep or heading to the gym. When the pressure is on in your family to provide care for a loved one, the first order of business is figuring out how to do it without sacrificing yourself in the process. One of the most reported concerns family caregivers unilaterally give as they go along with the caregiving journey is facing burnout. Everyone gets tired. That’s not the same. Burnout can take over your life and severely diminish your ability to care for yourself and others. It can affect job performance and impact family relations. No one wants that.

Burnout can be mitigated by knowing what your limits are or figuring out how to fit all the care needs in the day and still finish without wanting to be reduced to a puddle of tears as your head hits the pillow.

Reduce Burnout By:

Finding intermittent care for your loved one when you need it by enlisting in-home care services.

Recruit the help of family for some of the tasks you know are limiting your ability to care for yourself.

Find a grocery delivery service or use Amazon to deliver things you keep running out to the store for repeatedly when you can be doing other things.

Get a counselor for yourself to talk through the difficulties of caregiving.

Eat well. Get enough sleep. Move your body for 20 minutes a day.

Family Caregivers Tend To Forget About Planning For Succession

The best leader is the one who plans to be succeed in the future. So it should be with the family caregiver for more ways than one. If you are the one doing all the planning, medical consultation getting, and instructing others how to help with care, consider what would happen to all that information if something should happen to you that renders you unable to pass it on?

The problem with a family caregiver is there is usually one principal one with all the information and very little is known about medical history, care instructions, feeding concerns and medication lists by the other family members. Relying on medical records will never be enough for someone to step into your shoes and take over seamlessly. Planning needs to be done purposefully if assuming care by someone else is necessary. Family caregivers tend to forget they are walking around with valuable information that can be gone in a second if something happens to them.

Introducing eCare Vault. The first secure, cloud based platform of its kind to do just that. Now you can keep record of all that important medical information to share with family members about your loved one. Those professionals caring for your loved one can also participate, communicate and collaborate on the platform as well.

Now you don’t have to just tell others what care looks like for your loved one. They can see it for themselves in real-time and ask their own questions to get answers from professionals caring for your loved one as well. Family caregivers tend to forget how much information they carry around in between their ears until someone else needs it. You can’t stick a flash drive in your ear. Get eCare Vault today.